NEED SOUND EFFECT: Knife blade swish

Deuceofspades

Deuceofspades

Veteran
NEED A LITTLE HELP :)

I need a sound effect for a fight scene in DEUCE OF SPADES. I need the sound of a knife blade swishing, as one guy takes a swing at another. I surfed the net but didn't see / hear anything I liked.

Can anyone help?

Thank you!


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You can Foley it in yourself... just go to the hardware store and get a couple of very small-diameter, wooden dowels. Get a few different sizes. See which one records the best "swish," and even try cutting them to half the length.
 
It might also be nice to have an extremely subtle knife sharpen/shing along with the whoosh to help sell the idea of it being dangerous and coming close to cutting the guy. You can also record that using just a butcher's knife and a sharpening tool.
 
Yes. Most sound effects editing is rarely comprised of a single sound for any given item. Layers are a good thing.
 
A straightened out coat hangar will give you a sharper more metallic whoosh. If you have a convolution reverb you can also take a metal hit and use it as an IR and it will give a shimmery metallic note to what ever you run through it. Not that it matters much but you do realize that it is very unlikely that that action would make any noticeable sound. It should make the sound you want it to make but your more likely to find that sound by analyzing what YOU want it to sound like rather than trying to make the "real" think make a sound it probably doesn't make. Not sure if that made much sense but there you go.
 
What Noiz2 is trying to say - I think - is that sound is representational. Put in a sound that achieves the emotional impact you want rather than something that represents "reality." It does have to somewhat match the visual; that's one of the challenges - and fun - of doing sound design.

Most of the sounds we hear in movies do not occur in real life. Pistols - in fact most weapons - don't really sound as huge as they do in the movies. A window breaking no longer has that traditional "crash" sound since windows are made of polycarbonates that turn into little beads. Computers don't beep with every action - it would dive office workers insane.

Try this on for fun:

http://www.filmsound.org/cliche/
 
In addition to whooshes, you could add a metalic shing to some of the swishes. This one's a bit tricky to explain, but here goes:

Take a fairly large knife blade that has a good ring to it (chinese cleavers are brilliant for this), and record it being struck by another metal or wood object. The impact itself doesn't matter; the important part is a nice long ringing decay. In a DAW (Protools or what-have-you), trim the impact out altogether, and put in a fade-in that gives you a more gentle attack on the shing. Essentially, the goal is to take a "ding", remove the "d", and turn it into a "ying". With a fade-out, you'll be able to get the shing into a "shape" that's similar to a "whoosh" (gentle attack and decay, with a peak in the center). Layer the shing with a whoosh, and you'll have something that's both fast and sharp.
 
hi Guys :)

Thank you for all your feedback, I agree with everything said here. I was able to create something nice with a whoosh downloaded from freesound.com (they had many there, different length and pitch) and I added a few layer of additional sound including sound of the blade cutting the flesh. It is settle, but there. It worked real good and added some excitement to the shot, without being too over the top.

I usually like to do my own follies, but I am in a crunch right now with LOTs to do to finish this film by year end.

You guys have been very helpful, thank you much!
 
SMuir said:
Take a fairly large knife blade that has a good ring to it (chinese cleavers are brilliant for this), and record it being struck by another metal or wood object. The impact itself doesn't matter; the important part is a nice long ringing decay. In a DAW (Protools or what-have-you), trim the impact out altogether, and put in a fade-in that gives you a more gentle attack on the shing. Essentially, the goal is to take a "ding", remove the "d", and turn it into a "ying". With a fade-out, you'll be able to get the shing into a "shape" that's similar to a "whoosh" (gentle attack and decay, with a peak in the center). Layer the shing with a whoosh, and you'll have something that's both fast and sharp.
Click to expand...
Small bells also work well for this. I happen to have a large collection and have used them for precisely that purpose. Sometimes using a larger bell and pitching it way up (or a small bell and pitching it down) gives a more menacing tone.

Deuceofspades said:
I was able to create something nice with a whoosh downloaded from freesound.com...
Click to expand...
Great resource!
 
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